Employer changes and their effects on wages. Differences between genders and between different types of job mobility among German university graduates

ABSTRACT

Changes in wages and other job characteristics during an individual’s career are often the result of job mobility. Using a sample of Bavarian university graduates, this work analyses the effects that employer changes have on men’s and women’s wages. For this, employer changes are grouped into three categories in order to account for different circumstances. Partly in contrast to previous research, the results show significant and positive effects of job mobility, irrespective of gender and of the type of employer change. However, financial returns are lower in case of changes for personal reasons and – at least when absolute instead of relative changes are analysed – for women. This can be explained largely by different circumstances which personal employer changes occur in and which women experience. The results are discussed with respect to the specifics of the German labour market structure and to gender segregation on the labour market.

KEYWORDS:

• Employer change
• job mobility
• university graduates
• labour market

Disclosure statement

The author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data used in this study can be obtained from the Bavarian State Institute for Higher Education Research and Planning. Contact [email protected] for more information. https://www.bap.ihf.bayern.de/

Notes

1. The questionnaire is available online under http://www.bap.ihf.bayern.de/fileadmin/user_upload/BAP_Dateien/Absolventenjahrgaenge/2009-2010/BAP_0910.2_Fragebogen.pdf.

2. Respondents were asked in the 2nd survey to list months and years of birth of the children currently living in their household. This information from a fixed point in time was then used to retrospectively construct the dynamic variable ‘children living in the household’. This leaves room for some error since the respective children may not always have lived in the respondent’s household, but the creation of a better variable is not possible with the data at hand.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johannes Wieschke

Johannes Wieschke is working as a research assistant at the Bavarian State Institute for Higher Education Research and Planning since January 2015. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in sociology at the LMU Munich. His research focuses on the transition from higher education into the labour market and on labour market mobility of university graduates.